Halloween Costume Idea | Tippi Hedren in The Birds

This Saturday was the first of two Hallloween parties which Terry and I have been invited to this month, which means that, yes, there will be another one of these costume posts for you next week. Well, you know me: “never the same costume twice”, that’s my motto. That and “Never a really GOOD costume once,” obviously.

Now, as some of you know, this particular party presented me with something of a challenge, on account of how I’d already spent all my money on shoes by the time I decided to start thinking about what to wear to it. So, in my usual fashion, I headed off to my closet to see if there was any possible way I could just, you know, wear my own clothes and call them a “costume”, and that’s where the inspiration for this costume came from. This dress isn’t EXACTLY the same the same as the outfit Tippi Hedren wears in The Birds (By which I mean, “it’s nothing like it”), but it’s roughly the same colour as her skirt and jacket, and the style is from roughly the same era, so I decided it would have to do.

I’d noticed Matalan were selling fake birds in their Halloween shop, so with a few of those on their way, and a cheap blonde wig from eBay (It turns out no one sells “Tippi-Hedren-in-The-Birds” wigs, so I had to buy a blonde mullet wig instead and try to style it to a rough approximation of her ‘do. Did you know that hairspray, mousse, and a ton of other styling products have absolutely NO EFFECT AT ALL on synthetic hair? You do now!), all I needed was some way to attach the birds to my body. This turned out to be trickier than I’d assumed: when the birds turned up (Ever opened a delivery box to find it stuffed full of what appears to be dead birds? Because I have.), I realised they were much bigger than they’d looked on the website, which made them too heavy to pin/sew to the dress without ruining it. And I DO actually wear this dress, so, you know.

Luckily, however, with the help of Terry and a quick Google image search for inspiration, I had myself a “birds” head-dress, which made them appear to be flying right at my head. Score!

(Yes, I know I look more like I’m just doing jazz hands than anything else here. I don’t call these posts “half-assed” for nothing.)

(I say “with the HELP of Terry”. You all know that means “it was totally Terry who did this, I just drank wine and watched him,” don’t you? if not, let the record show that the birds were all Terry’s work, and he even attached some fake wings to them, because the ones we bought had their wings folded rather than outstretched, so they looked like they were levitating around my head. That would ALSO have been fairly spooky, but it would’ve been even LESS authentic than what I eventually ended up with, so like I say, Terry to the rescue. He only complained a few times, too.)

In the picture I was trying to recreate, Tippi Hedren is holding a giant torch. I don’t have a giant torch, so I went for a more modern interpretation, and used the torch on my iPhone. Oh, come on, Hitchcock would’ve loved it.

These photos were actually taken the day before the party, during a “test run” of my birds head-dress (and also so I could get some photos in daylight!): for the night itself, I managed to acquire a couple more birds:

Yes, it was a bit inconvenient. No, I didn’t manage to keep the wig on all night: I gave it a pretty good shot, though!

As for Terry:

He’s Redfoo from LMFAO, and I had to shamelessly steal these photos from Facebook because my birds seriously hampered my ability to work a camera, so the ones I took right before we left all came out blurry. Thank God for Facebook, huh! I’m happy to report that Terry’s costume was NOT pulled together using clothes he already owned, because that would mean Terry already owned a pair of women’s animal print leggings, and some thick gold chains, and I don’t know how he would explain that.

(Also stolen from Facebook)

Anyway! We had a great time, and now we’re gearing up for our NEXT Halloween party, which is this Saturday. This time I’m going to try to stay well away from wigs and birds…

27 comments

Thats amazing! I think it’s quite original too, can’t say I’ve seen this costume before! I’m still thinking of what to do for mine, since I have red hair too I tend to resort to red headed characters (last year it was Poison Ivy) xx

Gorgeous as always. I look forward to your costume every year. You never disappoint! You did however fail to mention Terry’s prep…..learning to “shuffle” and teaching it to everyone at the party….great fun! Love you guys. X

I think for costumes like this if you have the big iconic part of it (in this case the birds attacking), you can fudge the rest of the details and still be instantly recognizable. Love this costume idea.

I would never call this half arsed – however I am completely biased because you’ve included a Pinup Girl Clothing dress in your costume! We don’t do Halloween in Australia so no one is going to be dressing up, but I am looking forward to seeing your next costume 😀

Can you please please please give me some hints on how you made the headdress?? I have everything I need for my Tippy costume for my party this weekend but I can’t for the life of me get the birds to ‘hover’! 😓 I attached wire from a coat hanger to a headband and then attached birds to the end but it’s PAINFUL to wear and keeps falling off.